Volkswagen charges user for existing horsepower.
Also, the PuTTY site is finally out of the '90s.

The Subscription Office Supply Model

The company Volkswagen has decided that the engine your car physically contains is not actually yours until you pay a recurring software fee. The vehicle's existing hardware, which is perfectly capable of providing that extra bit of power or range, is now classified as a "feature on demand." This is the definition of a new-age corporate firewall; the hardware is already installed, but you need an expensive license key to unlock the stapler or the printer's color function. The move treats the internal combustion engine like a Software as a Service product, which, frankly, is a bold move given that a car is slightly more complicated than a CRM.

This model is spreading because the user base has already been thoroughly trained to pay monthly for television they only watch once, or cloud storage for files they have forgotten exist. Volkswagen is simply taking the "pay for what is already there" philosophy and applying it to physics. Industry analysts expect this trend to continue until one needs a premium tier just to unlock the use of the car's physical door handle, which will be called "Ergonomics as a Service." One comment thread even noted that the first thing people will do is figure out the crack; because if the code is on the chip, someone will find the patch.

The Day the Terminal Client Got a Tie

The venerable terminal client PuTTY, the backbone of a thousand sleepless nights and an entire generation of network diagnostics, has finally updated its website. This is the kind of massive infrastructure change that happens when a Systems Administrator gets a full two weeks of vacation and realizes the public-facing image is still using HTML tags from 1998. The previous site was a digital relic; a pure, unadulterated testament to the fact that if the code works, the surrounding web presentation can be ethically classified as a violation of the Geneva Convention.

The new site, putty.software, now looks like it was designed in this decade, perhaps even one of the early years. The key takeaway, of course, is that the software itself remains unchanged. It is the same piece of essential, robust, un-updated, and beautiful code it has always been; it just has a nicer looking business card. The reaction in the comment sections was a mix of quiet relief and a deep, existential dread that the update may somehow break the immutable law of the Unix toolchain.

The Corporate Content Filter We Deserve

A new browser application, cleverly titled ScrollGuard, is dedicated to blocking the internet's most corrosive feature: the short video loop that destroys all measurable productivity. The developer has correctly identified the true source of all modern corporate time-sinks, which is not poorly managed sprint cycles or vague quarterly goals, but the constant, readily available 15-second dopamine burst of TikTok and Instagram Reels. This is the equivalent of a weary middle manager installing a content filter on their own desktop just to avoid the temptation of looking productive while scrolling through infinite cat videos.

The comments on the Show HN post were not debating the philosophical need for such a tool. They were simply trading notes on the efficiency of various blocking methods and lamenting the collective addiction that now requires a dedicated security solution. This application is proof that we, as a species, are no longer capable of self-regulation and require a third-party script to prevent us from wandering into the digital breakroom and wasting the next four hours of company time.

Briefs

• Network Oopsie: A single person was able to claim 20 million IP addresses in the global routing table. This is what happens when a junior administrator accidentally clicks "Send All" on a Border Gateway Protocol update; a momentary flash of networking anarchy followed by a collective global sigh.
• The AI Memo: OpenAI has a progress update, but it largely consists of vague assurances about "agentic systems" and best practices. These are effectively internal memos that read like a corporate mission statement; plenty of impressive-sounding vocabulary but nothing concrete enough to break production.
• Windows Bloat: Microsoft keeps adding new features into Windows that no one asked for and no one needs, a continuous process known as 'Feature Creep'. This is the corporate equivalent of an uncle who keeps giving you more and more kitchen gadgets you will never use but have to keep on the counter to be polite.